Terrorist Attack in Belgium in 2023: National Security, Resilience and the Role of the Army

Belgium has been a target of terrorist attacks in recent years. The country faced its largest terrorist attack in 2016 at Brussels Airport in Zaventem and at the Maelbeek/Maalbeek metro station. This incident prompted Belgium to revise its national security strategy, focusing on addressing threats related to terrorism and extremism.

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Training a New Generation of Soldiers: the Use of Simulation Systems in the Swedish Armed Forces

Since armies existed, countries faced the need to train them. In fact, the level of training and the modernisation of the equipment, tactics, morale, and other factors less reliant on human capital determine an army’s strength. This article aims at underlying how training techniques for the military are currently undergoing the biggest leap forward they have witnessed since the adoption of firearms. Here the author will take advantage of this topic to present his first-hand experience with modern-day military training techniques involving simulators.

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The European Union’s fight against disinformation

Disinformation is not a new phenomenon, however, digital communications have changed the speed at which information travels. The easiness with which false information can be spread has made the European Union (EU) vulnerable during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the EU has taken steps to respond to these challenges.

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The Re-Emergence of Unmanned Ground Vehicles in Army Modernisation Efforts

The dawn of the new century seemed to promise an impending revolution in modern warfare in which unmanned, weaponised systems could augment the capabilities or even replace human elements from the battlefield. The use of unmanned systems in parallel or in lieu of human units factors would not only diversify and augment current military capabilities but also reduce the human risks of operating in hostile environments, even allowing to act in otherwise inaccessible scenarios.

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Rethinking Military Service in Europe

From 2023 Latvia will rely again on conscription, after abandoning it in 2007, when the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The decision was taken to strengthen army forces, that now rely only on 7,500 active soldiers and national guardsmen (Euronews, 2022). The Russian invasion of Ukraine created the need to reinforce the army potential, and conscription – the mandatory enlistment of people in the national armed forces of their citizenship country – helps to reach this goal by increasing the number of reservists. The Latvian Ministry of Defence plans to recruit some 500 young men aged 18-27 twice a year; Riga hopes the quotas will initially be filled by volunteers, with the compulsoriness becoming effective only at a later stage (Balčiūnas, 2022).

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